Something of this Clarence had before learned from the communicative
gossip of his landlady; and less desirous to satisfy his curiosity
than to lead the conversation from a topic which he felt must be so
unwelcome to Mordaunt, he expressed a wish to see the state apartments
of the house. With something of shame at the neglect they had
necessarily experienced, and something of pride at the splendour which
no neglect could efface, Mordaunt yielded to the request, and led the
way up a staircase of black oak, the walls and ceiling of which were
covered with frescoes of Italian art, to a suite of apartments in
which time and dust seemed the only tenants. Lingeringly did Clarence
gaze upon the rich velvet, the costly mirrors, the motley paintings of
a hundred ancestors, and the antique cabinets, containing, among the
most hoarded relics of the Mordaunt race, curiosities which the
hereditary enthusiasm of a line of cavaliers had treasured as the most
sacred of heirlooms, and which, even to the philosophical mind of
Mordaunt, possessed a value he did not seek too minutely to analyze.
Here was the goblet from which the first prince of Tudor had drunk
after the field of Bosworth. Here the ring with which the chivalrous
Francis the First had rewarded a signal feat of that famous Robert de
Mordaunt, who, as a poor but adventurous cadet of the house, had
brought to the "first gentleman of France" the assistance of his
sword. Here was the glove which Sir Walter had received from the
royal hand of Elizabeth, and worn in the lists upon a crest which the
lance of no antagonist in that knightly court could abase. And here,
more sacred than all, because connected with the memory of misfortune,
was a small box of silver which the last king of a fated line had
placed in the hands of the gray-headed descendant of that Sir Walter
after the battle of the Boyne, saying, "Keep this, Sir Everard
Mordaunt, for the sake of one who has purchased the luxury of